I think Landon is a dashing first name for a man, almost as good as Mister.
I am not thinking about changing my name. I am comfortable with who I am. I met a man named Landon. Everyone calls him Luke. I see him every Wednesday. Wednesday is meatloaf day in New Orleans. Meatloaf is the blue plate special all over town. It is like red beans and rice on Mondays and turkey necks on Thursdays.
Every New Orleans day has its own rhythm.
There is a day rhythm and there is a night rhythm. I am writing this during the day but it feels like this is the rhythm of the night. Sometimes day and night switch places in New Orleans. It is a twenty-four hour city. Everything is topsy-turvy.
Nothing works the way it would anywhere else. Little works. Let me take a survey of the room.
I was sitting next to a squat fireplug of a man. He was not a midget or a dwarf, just short. Standing, he was as tall as me sitting on a barstool. When he was standing, I looked him right in the eyebrow. He chose to sit next to lucky me. He was bald.
This wasn’t Luke. Luke has a lustrous head of hair. Luke showed up later. He sat on the other side of the bald guy. He saw more of the bald guy than I did. Maybe Luke was the lucky one.
This bald guy, he had his back turned to me most of the time. When I looked up turned my head to see what going on around me, the first thing I saw was the back of a sweaty, bald head. It is a good thing I was not hungry.
This bald guy was really sweaty. Python Lady commented on it. “It looks like you could use a tall glass of water, kemosabe,” she said.
Python Lady was right. This guy glistened like barbecue shrimp in the light. I said, “Put that water on Python Lady’s tab, not mine.”
Reptiles lack sweat glands.
This bald guy I was sitting next to has big pores. I know this because I had plenty of time to watch them ooze sweat. It dripped in rivulets between his stubble. It was like a nature documentary.
The sweaty bald guy sat next to me for about twenty minutes, and, you know what? I am going to milk every one of those minutes for all it is worth behind the paywall because I am in a mood to do so.
Paid subscribers can get ready for a layman’s dermatologic exam. I am trying to find the right words to write. Free subscribers, well, this is the end of the line for today. This is what you pay for. I have tabs to pay that don’t include some bald stranger’s glass of tap water.